Episcopal Press and News
Asian-American Episcopalians View Evangelism with '20/20' Vision: Monday Mission: Church Growth, Youth, Resources in Native Languages Cited as Priorities
Episcopal News Service. July 12, 2004 [071204-1]
Pat McCaughan
Vision was "20/20" as about 200 people from across the country met in San Francisco June17-21 for the 30th annual Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry (EAM) convocation, where evangelism and outreach were central topics.
Clergy and laity alike, from southwest Florida to Hawaii and from Los Angeles to New York -- representing at least two dozen dioceses -- shared views of evangelism, church planting, growth, of cultivating leadership and engaging youth, many of the aspects of the national church's plan to boost church attendance by the year 2020, said the Rev. Winfred Vergara, new national church missioner for Asian ministries.
"Every convocation was asked to report about its vision of growth, of church planting, training for young clergy for the next generation and attention to the youth," said Vergara, who joined the staff of the Episcopal Church Center May 1. "It was a good convocation. The spirit flows. We talked and shared experiences, new relationships have been formed. There's been a general feeling that we need a new beginning and people are ready for it. We are very hopeful that the new EAM will be a great success in terms of our ministry, fruitfulness of our ministry."
A priority in his new role is to facilitate open lines of communication with the national church and among at least six Asian convocations, he said. That includes the Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, and Southeast Asian or Vietnamese, Laotian, Church of South India, and Cambodian, convocations. It also embraces members of the Philippine Independent Church (PIC), and the Mar Thoma Church, Vergara said. Nationally, there are about 72 predominantly Asian Episcopal congregations, he said.
The former Manila Times journalist also has plans for a new multilingual website responsive to Asian Americans, both members and seekers, as well as publishing an Asiamerica quarterly newsletter, he added. The first issue of that publication, titled "ASIAM," has just been released.
The Rev. Fran Toy, the first Asian American woman priest in the Episcopal Church, a convocation organizer and its keynote speaker, explained that "Asiamerica was invented to include those who are American born and for persons of Asian ancestry." She told the gathering that EAM was established by an act of General Convention in 1973 and first met officially in 1974.
"We are here to discuss where we are going, to remember where we have been and to reflect on where we are," she said. "We are poised on the threshold of new beginnings," said Toy, who is now retired and lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Cultural competence, hospitality aid transitions
For the Rt. Rev. Artemio Zabala, who until his July 1 retirement was rector of Holy Trinity-St. Benedict Parish in Alhambra, California, Vergara's presence itself signals an era of new beginnings, which was the convocation theme.
"The convocation was invigorating, inspiring," said Zabala, 66, retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Central Philippines. "With Fred's background in planting new churches we have a lot to look forward to. He is very, very keen on evangelism and growth, in line with the 20/20 vision of the national church. He is encouraging everybody not just to maintain their established congregations but to really go out in obedience to the missionary command and preach the gospel to the increasing Asian immigrants, especially."
Zabala said the challenge for his own parish is to engage the wider community. The congregation is predominantly Filipino, with some Anglo, Latino, Chinese, and Trinidadian members.
"I have been challenging them to go beyond where they are, to open their doors and become more hospitable to the wider community. The mission statement of the parish has always been to establish an Anglican multicultural congregation and not just enjoy the blessings of Jesus for ourselves, but to share them with others.
"That was always the intention in EAM--it was necessary to build up ethnic congregations to assist in the challenges of newly arrived immigrants, and to share those blessings with the wider community."
Bishop Richard S. Chang of Hawaii agreed that maintaining a connection to the wider community is essential.
"We are very intentional about keeping connections with the wider church," said Chang, attending his first convocation as bishop. "Through the networks established, we identify models for doing ministry. There is a real need for various communities to come together and not feel isolated. Many of our people feel we're so far away that people tend to forget Hawaii."
Increasingly, the growing multicultural nature of the church--even among ethnic churches--is an issue, Chang noted.
"There is no ethnic majority in Hawaii. Even St. Peter's, which began as a Chinese language congregation is very diverse, very multicultural," he said. Numbered among the diocese's 10,800 members are people of Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Caucasian, Samoan and African descent, he said.
"I recently attended a confirmation class at a Filipino congregation where three of the seven people confirmed were not Filipino," Chang said. "The service was in English. Those are the kinds of transitions taking place."
Need for translations underscored
The Rev. Joshua Chan-Foo Ng, who is assisting at the Southern California mission congregation of St. Thomas', Hacienda Heights, says that while his congregation is also becoming more multicultural, with a third Chinese, a third Anglo and a third Filipino, his evangelism efforts are increasingly hampered by lack of liturgical resources.
The 80-member congregation currently has bilingual services in Cantonese and English, and is starting a Mandarin service in September in an effort to evangelize the surrounding neighborhood, which is largely Mandarin-speaking. Negotiations are also underway with a Taiwanese congregation sharing their space to join the Episcopal Church, which will add yet another dimension to Sunday worship, he said.
"Their pastor is 100 percent for joining us, and is planning to become an Episcopal priest," Ng said. "After that, he will use the Taiwanese language to slowly bring his members into joining the Episcopal Church."
Ng says the EAM convocations are valuable for networking with other Asian, particularly Chinese priests, who often provide him with much needed liturgical materials.
"Luckily, we have some Chinese priests from other dioceses that do a lot of translation and it's good to have them as a resource for the materials. It's a wonderful time for me. I learn a lot, sharing with the Chinese and other Asian priests, learning from their experiences," he said.
Vergara said that a Chinese translation of the Book of Communion Prayer is underway and should be available in late 2004. It will be used to evangelize both within and outside the country, he noted.
"Our hope is that we can give the prayer book to every seminarian in China," he said. "Imagine what that would be like."
Efforts are also aimed at providing liturgical resources.
"A liturgy in Korean is being developed and the Vietnamese convocation has been given a grant to work on Vietnamese translation of the prayer book," he said. "But it will take some time. We can do it in stages."
His goal is to have an Order of Service for Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Holy Eucharist Rite II available through the national church website in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
"I recently got a call from the Asian missioner of Europe, located in Paris," he said. "He asked me for the Eucharist in Japanese and it took some time to get it. Hopefully we will have Vietnamese available also, as well as Tagalog. Most Filipino-speaking congregations understand English or Tagalog."
Transformation reaches across generational lines
Kathryn Nishibayashi, 21, said demographic shifts are part of the transition at her home parish, St. Mary's, Mariposa Avenue, Los Angeles, traditionally a Japanese American congregation with an Anglo and a growing Belizean membership.
Unless a congregation has newly arrived immigrants, availability of bilingual services and liturgical materials are not so much the issue. More challenging is the question of how to keep young people engaged, said Nishibayashi, who was part of a 30-member youth delegation attending the convocation.
"The youth contingent was much stronger this year and it's nice to meet other young people," she said. "At St. Mary's, there just aren't any kids my age," said the Occidental College senior. "There are a lot of 30-somethings, and kids in junior high and high school. It's an interesting position to be in--alone and having no one to really talk to.
"In that respect, EAM is really helpful. I find out who might have stronger youth groups at their churches and what they are like. It's a support system. We don't do enough in this church for young people," she said.
Her experience mirrors a growing frustration with an overall generation gap and dwindling youth membership throughout the church.
At times, that gap seems more intense in ethnic congregations because of the clash between tradition and Western culture, said Brian Pahed, 19, a chemistry student at the University of California at Irvine who attends St. John's-Holy Child in Wilmington, California.
Pahed, a convocation guest speaker, challenged the gathering to engage more fully youth in congregations. "Young people in the church are stuck between a rock and a hard place with respect to honoring traditions and finding our own voices," he said. "And we have to step up, too, and get involved."
The Ven. Bernard Young, archdeacon for the Diocese of Long Island, called Pahed's comments timely.
"Long Island is an immigrant community, with lots of Haitians, Ibo-Nigerians, Hispanics, Asians and people from the Caribbean community," said Young, who oversees multicultural ministry in 32 congregations in the New York borough of Queens. More than one hundred languages or dialects are spoken in Queens, he said, and the generation gap is both personal and painful.
"I've faced it in my own life, with my own children," said Young, originally from Guyana. "You say to the young people, let's have a picnic and they want hamburgers, hot dogs, beer and pizza. Say it to the older generation and their idea of a picnic is noodles and rice cakes. My sons didn't like Caribbean food. I had to learn how to make pasta and meat balls. We as a church are not prepared to deal with it."
Vergara called on convocation attendees to listen to the "prophetic voices" of Pahed and other young Episcopalians. He noted that this is an issues facing the entire church, not just ethnic congregations.
"The older Asian churches are losing members just like any other traditional congregation," Vergara said. "The young people are not connected. We need to develop a new approach to young Episcopalians. They get bored with traditional services and they are our hope for new leadership."
Incentives needed to double membership by 2020
Vergara said he hopes to draw on some successes while serving as the Missioner for Asian Ministry in the Diocese of El Camino Real, just prior to joining the national church staff, when he developed YEAST, or Young Ethnic Americans Singing/serving/standing Together, which is a service, worship, and advocacy project.
As the Asian church in the United States grows, grappling with such issues will become unavoidable, he said.
He said he hopes to appoint an Asian American youth coordinator within a year. "It's part of my vision of development for the direction of youth ministry, even though no money has been budgeted for it yet. Perhaps the position will be appointed by the EAM council.
"The only budget we currently have is for this convocation. We have to find creative funding for new ministries."
Another goal is to develop a triadic national, diocesan and congregational partnership for church planting facilitated through EAM.
"We could take a diocese like South Dakota, which has Vietnamese congregations; EAM could come in with a kind of three-point funding. We'd invest three years from national office as our part, the diocese would invest for three years in local congregations and then the local congregations would go it on their own.
"It would result in a self-reliant, self-governing, self-propagating ministry."
He hopes to link the national church's congregational development office and outside funding sources to move forward with the project.
"20/20 can succeed only if we give incentives to ethnic churches," he said. "The realization of doubling membership by 2020 is possible. It's workable, if there is intentional affirmative action for ethnic churches."
Long Island's Young believes the future of the church is intertwined with ethnic ministry.
"The church could be more tolerant, show more appreciation for the ethnic groups and where they come from, learn more about the things that are important to them."
He plans to visit both India and the Philippines in the near future in an effort to more fully understand ministry to growing populations from both countries.
"Things happening back home affect what happens here," he said. "I had an Indian priest whose daughter didn't go to the prom because he didn't understand how to make it happen. Here, you make arrangements for a limo driver, and for godparents to come over, for the entire evening, but he didn't know how to do those things.
"It's such a struggle not to lose your culture, your identity, especially if you're newly arrived," he said. "We're caught in this whole issue of multicultural versus multiethnic."
Christopher Sigamoney, Diocese of Long Island, a chaplain at the Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn, understands that struggle.
He officiates at Tamil language services while serving as a supply priest but says his sons, 18 and 20, prefer to attend English services.
Sigamoney, 51, immigrated to the United States in 1996 from the Church of South India, and faced a staggering culture shock.
"I had to figure out how to survive in this country," he recalled. "Just getting a job was difficult. My sons adapted much easier. They go to church, but they don't really feel it."
Collaboration needed to remove barriers
Joseph Pae, 33, is a recipient of the Lilly Endowment Foundation and Scholarship program for young clergy and has served at Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, for two years.
He said appealing to young adults and cultivating youth leadership are essential but noted that "not all youth want new things. A lot want to turn back to traditional ways. They want something constant, and they want to find it in the church."
Currently serving at a 2,700-member Anglo congregation, he is nonetheless interested in ethnic ministry and said the Lilly program has given him an opportunity to explore parish ministry in an in-depth way. Still, more programs are needed and the church must lead the way, he said.
"The church is not adequately funded for youth ministry. There aren't enough resources our there essential to the survival of the ethnic church," said Pae, whose sponsoring parish is Church of the Holy Spirit, Flushing, New York, a Korean congregation.
The Episcopal Church Center "has a lot of resources and we have to figure out a way to connect with them," Pae said. "Most Korean priests only speak Korean, not English. Often, language remains a barrier."
Vergara said he hopes to remove that barrier.
He has plans to develop an annual Asian clergy retreat and continuing education for Asian clergy in the areas of preaching, leadership, evangelism.
"There's been a lot of criticism of the Decade of Evangelism," he said. "Some pessimists think 20/20 is another Decade of Evangelism but if we concentrated more on church growth in concert with development of ethnic ministry it might be a different story. Unless we make serious development of ethnic ministries a priority, I don't think the Anglo church will grow. The growth of 20/20 can't be realized apart from growth of ethnic ministries.
"It's time to draw inspiration and strength from one another. The reality is we are working in the context of many voices in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion," he said, adding: "We still have to move our Asian ministries from the marginal status closer to the center of decision making. We don't want to be ignored anymore because we have gifts to share. We want to have active role in life and work of Episcopal Church, a real connection."